03-26-2008

eBay Outlaws Digital Items & You Make More $$$!

This past week, eBay has made two announcements.

The first was to announce that their affiliate program would no longer be ran with CJ.com.

This news alone made my blood boil because I have thousands of links out there and they can’t all be changed. Not to mention the time it will take me to change the ones that I can.

And when the new program launches, I will only have 30 days to make changes.*ROAR*

The intelligent thing for eBay to do would be to slash their commissions at CJ, not accept new people to that program, and increase the commissions with the new program so people at CJ will have an incentive to make the move when they have time.

Then, as I’m sure you have heard already, eBay announced that as of March 31, digital items must be listed using the Classified Ads format.

You can read the official announcement HERE.

The first thing this should take away from this is…

…Your business should *never* rely on one method of income, lead generation, traffic or anything else.

You should always have mutliple streams so if/when one dries up, it doesn’t hurt nearly as bad.

Now that the damage is done, you have two options:

  1. You can kick and scream that it’s not fair and take your toys home.
  2. You can adapt AND turn it into bigger sales.

Option 1 is straight forward so I’m not going to comment on it.

However, option 2 can lead to more profits buy using a few different strategies and that’s what I want to cover.

Strategy 1: Use the Classified Ads

Just list your items as a classified ad. They only cost $9.99 for 30 days. You may need to work on your copywriting skills but that’s something you should be doing anyway. Maybe this will be the incentive you need to start.

If you can’t sell enough to cover the fees on the front end, you may need to rethink this marketing thing.

Strategy 2: Burn the Digital Items to CD

A soon as you put them onto a CD, you just made them a tangible product and within the eBay guidelines.

Strategy 3: Create Themed CDs

If you have 20 products that deal with the same topic, put them on a CD and give the CD a cool name.

This is actually great because you just created a new product that is YOURS and it’s how people use to do it.

Just be sure and double check all the licenses for the poducts.

Strategy 4: License Commercial CDs/DVDs

You can get master duplication rights to CDs and DVDs. I actually sell some right now and plan to be creating more in the very near future.

The ones I have available now are:

  1. Beginners Guide To List Building
  2. PLR Rights Domination

Strategy 5: Offer a Downsell to a Digital Version

Now, I don’t know how eBay will re-act to this BUT you could always offer to refund the S/H fee if they would rather opt for a digital only version.

Personally, I wouldn’t but you could.

The Extra Opportunities…

This decision has also created some *extra* ways for you to increase your profits and here are just a few…

1. You could even start creating CDs/DVs and sell licenses to them.

2. Include demo software that if people buy it, you will earn a commission.

3. Include inserts and advertise other products and services. If you sell enough volume, you could even sell insert to other people.

That’s three extra ways to increase your profits but their are others. Just use your imagination.

Now, if you don’t want to burn, print and ship the poducts yourself, you can use services like Kunaki.com, lulu.com or a different one. Just search Google and find one that will suit your needs and price.

Before I go, I want to mention that there will be less competition because people are lazy and many of them, will take their toys home.

To YOUR Success,

Garrie Wilson

Posted by Garrie in General

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